Vox Hoi Polloi: Social Media's Impact on Culture

Allow me to issue this warning right at the outset: what I'm about to say may seem, at times, harsh. Rest assured, dear reader, that unlike everybody else, the entirety of your oeuvre upon the internet is not only wholesome and uplifting but remarkably witty and unfailingly enjoyable. It's everyone else's doing that the streams of our internet feeds are sullied with inane detritus.

The point I'm making here is simple: never in human history has there been a time when the voices of regular people (the οι πολλοι, Greek for "the many", the common people) have been given such a platform. The ability to communicate with almost everyone is now in the hands of almost everyone, and that's truly unprecedented. Think about it: only a few hundred years ago the common man probably couldn't even read. And although literacy (especially in wealthier countries such as the United States) was the norm by 1900 or so, most of the reading people did would have been published media. Newspaper articles written by journalists and editors, or published books; in other words, media authored by educated people whose profession it was to write. That's a generalization, of course. The barrier to the written word is very low; that's the entire point of literacy. "Dime novels" existed in the Civil War era.

But don't miss the point. Now, anyone that can access the internet (including you and 5.5 billion other people) can post all their thoughts for the world to see. It is free. The barrier has been torn down. And what this means is that all of us have unprecedented access to what stupid people are thinking. Think how dumb the average person is, George Carlin said, and realize that half the people in the world are dumber than that. And they're posting on the internet. It's diluted the intellectual space, if that makes sense. Smart people are still writing, researching, and inflating themselves with self-worth. But everyone else in the world is right there along with them. You can go onto Twitter right now and tag the Vice President of the United States and there is a credible chance that he would reply. People talk about the spread of misinformation: it's directly correlated with the spread of information. There are no consequences for saying anything. Smart people can say smart things, stupid people can say stupid things, and vice versa: in an information-drenched era, there is little incentive to be wise, thoughtful, or even factually accurate. (In fact, often the reverse is the case.)

What does this mean? It means the "silent majority" is now loud. It means that populism, instead of a tool by which demagogues steered the ships of fate, has now grabbed control for itself. Momentary waves of fame give heretofore-nobodies influence they could hardly dream of only weeks prior. This isn't only about politics, either (although I do believe it's responsible for much of the environment our politics have adjusted to). Corporations are forced to cater to the eddying whims of the multitude, as well (although they're more used to it). But it's disappointing to see a culture continually breaking technological and scientific barriers eroding its own successes.

I want to try not to sound revoltingly elitist. Most of these changes are positives. Human literacy has taken huge steps in the past few centuries, and that's an unqualified good. The internet has innumerable benefits to all aspects of society, probably most of which we aren't even aware of. But human nature cannot and will not change. Man remains brutish and nasty, even despite his best efforts. Social media has given all of human nature a voice, not just the well-intentioned bits. And thus we shouldn't be surprised that usually, it's best we not listen.